9/11

Ten years ago, I was living in a house in Sarasota, Florida. I was just waking up and getting ready for class when Bonnie came home from her early morning class to tell me that the US was under attack, that planes had hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Never in my life have I experienced such confusion, terror, and panic as I did on that morning. Sheer and utter panic, the world I thought I knew no longer existing, my mom potentially dead. I tried calling my mom but couldn't get a hold of her. I really started to panic, believing my mom had died in the Pentagon, where she worked. I watched news coverage and that did nothing to calm me. I might have tried calling my sister next to see if she had heard from mom - I don't remember. I do remember getting ahold of my dad at some point and he had heard from my mom, saying that she was okay, that she was fine. I cried out of relief and because there were just too many emotions for my body to process any other way.

Ten years have passed since that horrific day, all of us changed people in so many ways. A bubble was pierced and things we never used to imagine or fear will now sometimes cross our minds, the possible expanded to include atrocities that were unimaginable in America ten years and a day ago.

I'm not sure where America is now and where it would be if things hadn't happened. I know that the sky is gray now after being blue this morning, that there is a dog asleep on the couch next to me, that I'm now in my thirties, that I am very confused about what I am going to do with my life, how I am going to still make something of it, that there are several emails in my inbox that I have sent to myself, links to jobs that I should apply to, and that instead of applying to them, I have been looking at porn and taking vitamins and putting on face masks. Those are the things I do know.